


Bibliophilia

by glim



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never reveals how providence works itself out, moment by moment, how the future that awaits you becomes reality, how life becomes legend and how the changes wrought by time become text.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bibliophilia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Summer of Giles 2009. Pre-BtVS, post-Merlin.

Giles leans against the table in the Council's reading rooms and watches the boy spread his hands over the pages of an ancient book. Not close enough to touch them, but near enough that the gesture's an intimate one. "I think, if you asked nicely, they'd let you have it back."

"What? Oh, no, I don't need it returned." The boy – except, no, he's not a boy, and Giles wonders if he ever really was, though he looks like he might be only a few years younger than Giles – ducks his head and grins. "I just like to look at it once in a while, to see the bent corners and the ripped edges."

He doesn't come to the archives here very often, though the Council has worked with him for years. Sometimes it's every few months, sometimes every few years or decades that he'll show up and ask to see the older books or manuscripts. Or, at least, that's the information Giles has been given.

As far as Giles himself can tell, the other man has been coming every few weeks, often enough to have a new ID tag from the Council, a shot of him in a faded tee shirt and jeans, the name William Emrys typed neatly beneath the photograph. He looks like he shops at Oxfam, cuts his own hair, and hasn't replaced the messenger bag in which he carries books, papers, and hapless pencils in years.

Everyone knows him. Everyone at the Council, anyway, knows that he's just as old as half the volumes in the archives and that they're lucky he's allied himself with them and not, say, Wolfram &amp; Hart.

Giles knows all these facts and, yet, what he's most fascinated by, what he finds most interesting, are the stories Merlin never tells about himself. He never reveals how providence works itself out, moment by moment, how the future that awaits you becomes reality, how life becomes legend and how the changes wrought by time become text.

The moment to ask such questions never appears, despite Giles' longing to do so.

"Do you remember? Where all the … like, that, that tear, how it happened?" Pointing to a faint stain that steals across a page crowded with small, complicated script, Giles leans over Merlin.

Merlin nods. "I think, that? Probably Arthur. Being a nuisance, though he would've claimed he didn't mean to spill the wine while I was trying to read."

Another question comes to Giles' lips and he's almost brave enough to ask Merlin about the past, or even about the future, whatever knowledge he has and can share with Giles to ease this reconciliation he's arrived at with himself, with the Council, with that amorphous thing everyone around him tells him he's destined for.

Almost, but not quite. There's something else about Merlin, something about the way he reads and touches the books, the way he looks at Giles and looks at the brush of their hands against each other. Like, perhaps, there are questions he'd like to ask Giles.

Not that they don't talk – they talk about food, sport, about politics and England's ever changing weather, about books and the shared lexicon of magic and history between them.

Most days, they read together, and Giles watches Merlin page through books, his touch as light and elusive as magic itself. One afternoon they have lunch together, parsing magic texts and eating sandwiches outside during a respite from several days of rain. Another day they go out for a drink and Giles confesses the career fate chose for him is that last choice he would've made for himself.

Today, after he puts the book away, Giles finds Merlin still sitting at the table, folded up in his seat so his chin rests on his knees.

"I was wondering… Do you want Indian tonight?" He stumbles around the invitation and rubs a hand through his hair. He can't remember the last time he asked someone out; he certainly never had to ask Ethan. And, good god, what is it with him and sorcerers? "We could even get takeaway. Together."

Merlin smiles, his awkward, lopsided, ancient smile, and nods. "Yeah. I'd like that. Is there a place by yours?"

That evening, they get the offered Indian take-away, a bottle of wine, and walk back to Giles' flat, where Giles watches Merlin again. Reads loss in his touch, reads pain and memory in the way his hands hover over Giles' skin, reads his own strange tale of destiny in the few words Merlin utters to him as they fall asleep. There's magic enough in the way they touch each other, the way Merlin's sorcery creates a sharpness in the air as they come together and then a warmth as they settle for the night.

He leans against the kitchen table the next morning, grateful to find breakfast laid out, and rests a hand on Merlin's shoulder. "If you ask nicely, I'll let you keep that paper."

"Or you could just let me stay to read it." Merlin looks up at him, the expression on his face so incredibly boyish that Giles can't help but forget how very old and powerful he is. "I bought juice."

Juice, tea, eggs, toast, and the paper cover the table and it's more breakfast than Giles is used to having on any given day, whether or not it's the weekend and he's brought somebody home the night before. They read the paper, Giles makes more tea, Merlin folds himself into that ridiculous position at the table like he does in the reading rooms. It's sunny again, so they walk to the Council buildings, and Giles finds himself suddenly grateful he's never asked Merlin anything about the future, never asked him when he'll stop coming by to do research at the Council archives.

Giles never asks Merlin how he resigned himself to life and suspects, perhaps, it's because he's decided such resignation need not happen, and with that decision comes relief.


End file.
